


Settle Up

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Quid Pro Quo [8]
Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Casual Sex, Choking, Collars, Developing Relationship, Frank Castle is a Dumbass, M/M, Mild Pet Play, Multi, Possessive Behavior, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:42:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: It's been a whole year since this started, which wouldn't be freaking Frank out if Wade hadn't decided to point it out.





	1. All Gone

Somewhere back around the start of all this, Frank had told himself it wasn't going to become a Thing.

Even in saying what it wouldn't be, he couldn't quite define it. He's not a terribly superstitious man, but there's a certain grave power to naming a thing. Named things were more tangible than unnamed ones; you couldn't be caught by something unnamed. It's childish logic, idiot logic, but ingrained, too.

And the issue was, what was supposed to be a one-time thing happened again. What had been a 'get Wilson to drop the gag of wanting sex' morphed into 'blowing Cable in private and calling it repaying a debt'.

He knew -- he'd _known_ , right from the start -- that Cable wasn't the kind of guy to hold a sexual favour he didn't actually want to give over him. It was easier, though… his mind damn near _scrambled_ for the excuse. It wasn't that he _wanted_ , it was just a debt he needed to clear out.

Point being, that should have been it. Score settled, tab paid, marks even. And he held out, he did, a few months of lewd comments from Wilson and piercing looks from Cable. Jobs run together as a little team, working in concert that felt good, following Cable's orders and trusting Wilson to watch his back. He could write off Wilson's come-ons as more insane babble, the heat in Cable's eye as his own eyes seeing wrong.

Then Switzerland happened. Switzerland changed things. Cable, soft and patient and kind, asking to be allowed to look after him when he'd been injured,  changed things. Cable promised him two favours if he stayed, and there was a sort of joke there but a sincerity to it to. Favours from a powerhouse like Cable were valuable, Frank told himself.

Another excuse, a way of okaying it for himself to grab the indulgence offered him.

He hadn't owed anyone anything when he'd let Cable fuck him in that warm, sunny bedroom, but days later, when Wilson had broken in and baldly, brazenly propositioned him for kinky couch sex, he'd told himself he owed Wade. He'd fucked his boyfriend, hadn't he? It was unfair to cut Wilson out when Wilson had been the one putting the work into getting to know Frank.

And so it kept happening. He fucked Wilson on the couch. Told himself it wasn't going to happen again, knowing it would. He cashed in a favour _asking_ Cable to beat him, accepting it when it turned into some psycho-sexual thing scouring him out and setting him back proper in his head.

So then it was maybe some kind of a Thing. Maybe that was the point he accept it was Something even if he still balked at naming it properly.

But it changed again, didn't it, when he gave Wilson a key to his shithole apartment. The studio space was tiny, smelled forever of boiled onion and cabbage, with a closet of a bathroom that suffered eternally from mildew Frank couldn't seem to clean efficiently. It was dark and small and ugly, and it was Frank's, a place that was just his. He didn't bring the job there, he could uncoil there, it was _his_. His place.

And he gave Wilson a key.

Lieberman's money had paid for the place, the first few month's rent, security deposit, furnishings. Everything Frank needed to have a lIfe that wasn't his fucking war. Lieberman had wanted that for him. Lieberman had even visited a few times, drank beer and offered advice on making the most out of the windows he had, but Lieberman didn't have a key.

 _Wilson_ had a key.

And that was the thing of it, the key (haha) to this unnamable Thing -- Frank gave that key away willingly. No one had robbed him of his agency anywhere along the line to where he stood now. The 'debts' and 'favours' had never been anything but excuses he plastered over the Thing he refused to acknowledge existed.

Frank was lonely, was part of it. It feels ugly, weak, to label the emotion that squats in his head, cousin to the more acceptable boredom, child of the grief he keeps burying. He's _lonely_ , fine, he can cop to that. And it's a kind of lonely that people like Lieberman can't touch.

Lieberman had his family. Lieberman had gotten to go home. And if the happiness Frank feels is tinged with a certain dark bitterness, well, Frank's pretty goddamn sure that's not a crime. It doesn't take a genius to see the parallels between Lieberman's story and Frank's own, so so fucking what if Frank's a little bitter that only one of them gets to hug his kids and kiss his wife at the end of the day.

When Wilson slips into Frank's apartment, drinks his coffee or his beer, or brings stronger shit they can share while they eat shitty take out and talk, Frank's not lonely. Even when Wilson shows up while Frank's muddling through a world class migraine, there's a clawing, grasping part of Frank that makes him set the merc on the couch and carry something like a conversation. When they fuck, he doesn't have room in his head for the dark shit; when they fuck, he laughs more than he can remember laughing with anyone else.

It sounds fucking insane to put plain, but Wilson is _good_ for Frank.

And if Wilson is good for him, so is Cable. Cable's maybe better, the way he can push into Frank's brain and pick him apart at the seams, make him feel small, make the fear and rabid anger bleed away.

It's a goddamn problem. Thinking about it puts a certain terrible tightness in Frank's throat, something that makes him want to scream in defiance of.

Once upon a time, he'd wanted to be a priest. He'd even entertained the idea of seminary school, before seeing an escape from his own rage in a much more cathartic sort of way in the military. When he was a kid, he believed in a personal, loving God, a God who was invested in the life of every human being on earth, even if they didn't believe in him. He believed in heaven and he believed in hell.

Somewhere in the desert, looking at the ruin of a convoy and the bodies of civilians chewed up by machine gun fire and shrapnel, indistinguishable from the enemy and just as dead as his fellow American servicemen, he'd stopped believing that. Maybe God was real, maybe He wasn't, but if He was, He'd stopped caring.

In the park where gang violence had been bought and paid to wipe him and his family off the face of the earth, Frank had decided for good and all that God, if ever real at all, was dead.

It was a pretty thought, to say Maria and the kids were in heaven. A tempting thought, indulgent and seductive, but Frank couldn't believe in things by halves. If heaven was real, so was the God that made it, and he could not, would not believe in Him anymore.

So it's pointless to wonder what Maria would think of this shit he's gotten himself into now. Maria is dead, and the dead blessedly no longer have to think. If she were alive, the shit wouldn't be a problem, because he'd never have gotten into it in the first place.

Part of him thinks he should end this Thing. It might be good -- the respite, the sense of, if not normalcy then at least calm that suffuses being with Wilson and Cable. Not just the sex, but working with them, trusting them.

Call it a tactical retreat if it makes running from it feel more tolerable, but walk away. No point changing the locks since he knows Wilson would pick them and Cable can do worse. Get a new phone, get a new place, change his routine, disappear for a while. New York is home and always will be, but crime is everywhere and there are places that could use a hand taming it.

Except anymore he can't even jack off in peace. He's infected; he gets off exclusively to thoughts of fucking Wade, or Cable fucking him, or -- and god, but it's almost worth the guilt for how _good_ the idea is -- getting to do both at the same time. Getting off had been a mechanical thing for so long now, just something to do to ease the ever-present tension wound all through him, and now his head is full of useless fantasies, hungers for things he shouldn't even know he wants.

In the service, after marrying Maria, they'd made an agreement. If there was someone they wanted to sleep with, then as long as they took reasonable care, they pursued it, because they both had appetites and it was healthy to feed them. The issue here was not some misguided sense of betraying his wife or dishonoring her memory, because he never could. If she were alive and he'd somehow gotten mixed up with these idiots anyway, she'd only demand to hear every nasty detail.

No the issue is that it's not just the sex. It's not just that he can't seem to avoid thinking about either or both of them when he touches himself, or that it's become common practice on nights when Wilson shows up for Wade to pin his hips to the couch and suck him off before he even makes coffee. It's not the sex, it's not the getting off, it's not memories he may or may not be dishonoring.

It's the want.

It's the knowledge that despite all his best efforts to keep this... well, it was never professional, but maybe at least unemotional, it's become -- maybe always _been_ \-- anything but. He's infected, sure, but it's not just general horniness, it's the _want_ to be around them. Either of them, both of them, fucking or not.

He feels like he's going fucking insane.

Emotion has never exactly been easy for him. He's always been distant with people, always a little mistrustful, always let himself stay on the fringes of things. That's part of why Maria had been so perfect for him, the extrovert to his introvert, always keenly sensing when to push and when to let him alone. With her, he'd felt balanced, properly weighted, and losing her had thrown him so off kilter for so long that the sense of _regaining_ that balance, with two men who could very realistically kill him if they wanted, was enough to make him dizzy in a whole new way.

Maybe he should run. Maybe that's the smart choice, just put some distance here, get some perspective.

Part of him _does_ want that. Part of him feels trapped and terrified and, feeling like that, paces around in the cage of his brain, snarling and snapping and making everything, every single other thing, feel like a fucking threat to his survival.

But that part of him is only part, and it's not even the largest part. If it were, he'd be gone; he'd have fucking pulled up stakes and departed months ago. Maybe after the apartment in Long Island, all that glass, waking up in a bed that smelled like dust and sex and Cable's sweat and aftershave. Maybe before that, maybe after Switzerland, or after fucking Wilson on the couch while he pretended to collar him.

The angry, snarling animal part of him insists that would have been the smart thing, but the thing is that the snarling animal in his brain is greedy in it's own right. It would starve out the rest of him until every other good thing in him is dead, so he's nothing but that snarling, raging, beast, and it would call that self-reliance, self-control, self-care in the way only a man like him can care for himself. It's the part of him that had told him he should just kill Lieberman. It's the part of him that told him not to stop at Schoonover, not to stop at Rawlins, not to stop at Russo.

He fed that animal in his head often. He listened to it, but he tried to temper it, too, because he knows -- the whole rest of him knows -- that to obey every whim of that animal is to become the same scum he puts down. He takes out people that deserve it; the animal just kills because killing is easy, killing feels good.

Glancing at his phone, Frank scowls, flips it closed again, tosses the damn thing on the coffee table and puts his feet on the couch. He feels ridiculously like its betrayed him by still displaying the message from Wilson that had launched this whole panic in the first place.

He could delete it. Sit on it for a week and make excuses that he'd lost his phone, forgotten to charge it, broken the damn thing. Hell, that kind of lie, Cable probably wouldn't even call him out on. He'd know it was a lie but he'd leave it alone unless Frank let him look at it, because that was how they did things now. Cable could come in, but he couldn't just flip through Frank's brain like a magazine in a waiting room.

So yeah, he could lie. Wilson would pout and move on and it wouldn't matter because Wilson had the attention span of a goddamn fish and was liable to get distracted by the next shiny, sexy idea.

But then again, Wilson's the one who pointed out the whole issue, so maybe the manic, unfocused idiot thing was some measure of an act. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he liked to pretend.

Anniversary. How the fucking hell had it been a year?


	2. Something Lonesome, So Wholesome

It's cold in Frank's apartment no matter what he does. He could spend the cash on a portable heater, but given that he doesn't even always sleep here, it seems stupid to bog down with more shit to move or leave behind if he has to ditch this place.

He doesn't want to ditch it, but it's an option that looms. He's got bolthole safe houses all over the city, a couple in Jersey, and the van is kitted out to live from should he need to travel or go mobile. People like him aren't supposed to put roots down for a reason, which is why there's always been the faintest sense of guilt hovering around keeping this place.

Guilt serves no great purpose, and it certainly doesn't do shit to keep a man warm, which is why Frank is standing on a rickety dining room chair fixing what amounts to plastic wrap on the windows he likes to use as back doors when he hears the lock turn on the door. With the deadbolt engaged, it still won't open, but then Wilson is going to know he's home anyway.

Frank curses under his breath as the door rattles and then Wilson knocks.

He'd thought he'd have longer to mull his options over before Wilson got weird about it. The fucking text had said Wednesday. It's only fucking Saturday.

Another flurry of knocks, insistent, and a muffled falsetto calling from the other side.

"Hold your goddamn horses, jackass," Frank growls, knowing damn well Wilson can't hear him, couldn't have even if he wasn't banging on the door, not with the distance and a locked door between them. The kitchen chair finally gives up and topples as Frank climbs off it, clattering and skittering into the wall as Frank sidesteps away, lucky not to have ended up on his ass.

Wade standing in the hall looks concerned enough that Frank feels a fresh twist of guilt at his own irritation. He huffs and gestures Wade inside and the mutate steps in quickly, shutting and locking the door behind himself in compliance with Frank's usual behaviour. When he meets Frank's eyes again, he's so obviously looking for approval that Frank has to look away, shaking his head.

Sometimes having Wilson around is like housing one of those fighting dogs. Same kind of brittle loyalty to a kind hand, same sincere bid for head pats and belly scratches, even though the wrong move is liable to get bared teeth and bitten fingers. Wade's dangerous like a fighting dog too, his affection laced with violence because that's what his body is used to, what he's trained for, it's where his reflexes go. Looking at him standing by the locked door, Frank can practically see his tail wagging, and it's stupid.

It's so fucking stupid, letting this man in his space, the eager way something in his chest opens up in unabashed delight that he's here.

"Sit," Frank grumbles, waving a hand as he passes the couch to righten the fallen chair and finish what he'd started. He listens to the ugly old couch groan its usual complaints as Wade flops down, stretching across it.

"Doin'?" Wilson asks after a beat of quiet, and when Frank glances at him, he's rolled on his belly and leaned so his stomach is on the arm and his whole top half is leaning out to look around the couch and watch Frank.

What in god's name Frank ever did to have to put up with the affections of Wade Wilson, he can't fathom. Probably the extrajudicial kidnapping and torturing of men his superiors told him were terrorists. Maybe just signing on to serve the bloated, inefficient monster of the United States military.

That's not fair. He's pissed off and irritable but even still, the idea that Wade is a punishment he's meant to endure for past sins is infinitely more cruel than Wade deserves.

"Trying to stop the heat bleeding out," Frank says, too measured to hide the anger simmering under everything. He needs a good fight, and he's got his eyes on a high stakes game the Italians are running out of a computer repair shop in Brooklyn. Lieberman is supposed to get him details by tonight, and tomorrow he'll make a move. Give everyone a happy start to the holiday season, one big job falling together before everyone splits for Thanksgiving.

"Works better if you do bubble wrap," Wade says, letting himself pitch forward and slide off onto the floor, flopping there with his ankles still on the armrest. Frank doesn't know if he's amused, alarmed, or appropriately disgusted to see that Wilson is still wearing his hideous Crocs despite the almost freezing November weather. "Use ta hafta do that at my place. Did it for Al a while ago, too, cuz ain't like she's using the windows for light."

Frank has no idea who Al is, other than some woman Wade talks about. All he's gleaned thus far is that she's older, Wade cares about her and insists on harassing her, and she's either crippled or possibly blind. Frank has not asked about Al because he's entangled in Wilson's social net enough as it is.

"Can't see through bubble wrap," Frank says, exhaling as he leans on the rickety chair. "Need to be able to see out."

The chair steadies and Frank feels tension run sharp, wires drawing taut all through him at Wade's sudden proximity. And he knows, as keyed in to other people as Wilson is, that the merc can tell, but when he glances down, Wade is just holding the chair steady and staring out the window at the not-a-view Frank's apartment offers. He gives a sardonically raised brow when he finally looks up to meet Frank's eye.

"Yeah, I'd hate to give _that_ up too," he says cheekily, and it's not a good joke or even that funny of a line, not compared to some of the shit that comes out of Wilson's mouth, but Frank can't stop the little amused noise that works out of his throat.

"Yer an ass," Frank grumbles, leaning over the back of the chair to smooth the plastic against the tape.

Wade laughs and immediately fires back, "Urine ass," school-kid wit that shouldn't be funny, and still manages to trip Frank up.

He seriously wonders sometimes if Wilson fakes the idiot act. If he does it do disarm people the way attractive people sometimes disarm others just by smiling. Wilson isn’t shy about talking about certain aspects of his past -- and the things he does shy away from are so blatantly sore spots that _Frank_ can tell -- so Frank’s well enough aware that Wilson served in some special ops unit.

It could be Wilson acts like an idiot -- or more of an idiot than he actually is -- to get people to like him, or at least pay attention to him.

With the chair held steady and Frank not force to move slow trying to keep from overbalancing it, they make quick work of the plastic wrap and Wade is enthusiastically helpful with the hairdryer, babbling the whole time. Frank listens with half an ear, reevaluating for the umpteenth time; Wilson can’t be putting on, because no sane person’s brain goes from hairdryer to condoms to cockrings to dance music. By the time the job is finished, Frank _does_ feel less irritable.

Only after Wilson’s back seated on the couch and he’s bringing coffee over does the tension start to creep back in. In the last few months -- since that night in April, really, since Frank had given Wade a key and let him spend the night in his bed -- Wilson was usually all over him five minutes in, regardless of what Frank was doing when he got here. Five minutes, if that; the man had no self restraint and acted like it was both his sole purpose and his favourite hobby to suck Frank’s dick.

Having him back to just sitting around trying to bait Frank into talking about gun preferences while using as many juvenile double entendres as possible was unnerving. Not because Frank liked his evening randomly interrupted by horny mercenaries, but because it was jarring to realize Wade was attempting to be _considerate_.

It’s almost a relief when Wilson _does_ touch, fingers walking over the curve of Frank’s bicep that he slaps away, or tries to; Wade tangles their fingers together and hums, leaning to rest his head against Frank’s arm instead. Frank narrows his eyes but allows this.

“You’re very tense today, big guy,” Wilson says and that should be enough for Frank to know where this is going, to either force it to a head or kick Wilson out, but he does neither, grunting a low noise of acknowledgement and drinking his coffee.

The thing is, he doesn’t want Wade to leave, not really, and if Wilson’s just going to dance around the conversation then Frank’s willing to let him. He’s sure as hell not going to be the one that launches into it.

Wade takes an awkward drink of his coffee, the angle bad but somehow manages not to spill any, before pulling away to set his mug on the table and shift so he’s kneeling on the couch resting his hands on Frank’s shoulder and leaning against him. Again, it’s like having a particularly needy dog; Wade’s eyes are big and searching and everything about him is begging for affection in a way that makes Frank feel simultaneously mean for his lack of affectionate output and oddly soft that anyone should still look at him that way.

“So, I don’t know if you know this,” Wade starts, and wiggles all the closer when Frank looks away with a muttered curse, “but I’m actually like, a _mazing_ at massage. Loosen you right up. Relax you. Melt all that stress right off ‘til you’re a big pile of… unstressed… murder-vigilante...”

Frank could snap or push Wilson away or say something nasty. He could also suggest they skip the massage, flip it, be the one making the lewd suggestions for once. It’s not like Wilson’s likely to be offended -- hell, he’d probably be delighted. It would save a fight, drop the chances of having that looming conversation about the unanswered text… it’s a good solution.

“Yeah, alright,” Frank says instead, draining his mug and leaning in to put it beside Wade's on the table. He stays angled forward, resting his elbows on his knees so his back is reachable if Wilson leans over the back of the couch. Just doing that makes something between his shoulders pop loudly, and Wade hisses through his teeth, sympathetic.

It's more surprising than it should be, that Wade's actually pretty good at this. He moves to curl gamely over the back of the couch, probably having to stand on his toes to manage to press and rub little circles at the back of Frank's neck. He digs in just to the edge of pain and circles his fingers and his thumb, just one hand at first, and almost immediately Frank feels some relief in the tension headache that's been brewing like a thunderstorm in his head.

Spreading his fingers and sliding his hand up, Wade cards through Frank's hair, petting wrong-ways, against the grain. It's a gentle thing, and Frank can't help noticing the easy, considerate way Wade avoids the snarled divot of a scar where the bullet went into his head. Sometimes he feels nothing if he presses his fingers there, sometimes the slightest touch feels like he’s clutching a live wire.

"Bein' awful quiet," Frank rumbles, barely moving his lips. "It's fuckin' weird."

"Tryin' really hard not to make a happy ending joke," Wade replies easily, the usual rasp of his voice exaggerated, the way it always gets when he keeps the volume down.

Frank hums a low noise, contentment warring with irritable anxiety in his gut as Wade continues to pet him, stroking his hair, massaging his neck, then back to his hair. "You can have one," he finally mutters, trying to sound jokingly magnanimous the way Wilson would have, positions reversed, managing to just sound tired. "Better pick a good one."

Another hand joins the one working his neck, two thumbs pressed along the center of his spine and then drawing back, a firm line from nape to the center of his shoulders. Frank suddenly, powerfully, wants his shirt off. He wants to feel more than just the heat and pressure of those palms.

Wilson's hands are rough and deeply textured but not by calluses, and they rarely feel the same one day to the next. Just like the look of his face is always a little different, the lumps and scars and angry weals in constant shift, so it was with the rest of him.

"I'm beginning to suspect there might be a reason why the parlor tables are all, y'know," Wade sweeps his hands apart, across the breadth of Frank's shoulders, digging thumbs back in to knead at the blades. It feels good, and Frank hangs his head, biting back a noise. "Flat."

"Just wanna get me in bed," Frank accuses, enjoying the way Wilson's hands draw pain to the surface and then work it to nothing.

"Your Honour, I'm but a simple masseuse doing my job, trying to make ends meet."

"Hopin' I'll give  _you_ a happy ending."

"That too," Wade accepts the allegation cheerfully, not breaking the rhythm of his hands until Frank shrugs him off and sits back straight. His hands still feel tense, as if all the stress Wade's carefully worked from his neck and shoulders has just moved to his limbs, and…

All of this is stupid. _Life_ is stupid. And cruel and painful and violent, so is it any wonder that he should want to throw himself into the few things that feel good?

It's the use of that one word, just one goddamn… like this has all meant something after all. Why else would Wilson have bothered to keep track?

Or maybe that was a joke. Maybe he'd been meant to laugh.

He tosses his shirt into the laundry hamper, scowling when it slides over the lip and onto the floor, and moves past Wade to lay face-down on the bed. He expects a whistle or one of Wade's weird, almost cartoonish compliments, gets the sound of groaning bed springs instead as Wilson kneels beside him.

It's more restraint than Frank had imagined; laid out like this he'd figured Wade would climb on top, if he was going to keep the pretense of massage up at all. But he just kneels there, rubbing his hands together, muttering something about oil and pillows and messes to himself before he gets back to work.

By this point, it shouldn't be so surprising that Wade can make him feel so good. Is it really a shock that a man who knows so many ways to kill with his hands should also know how to use them like this?

Frank still finds himself biting back little noises of surprised pleasure as Wade works over his shoulders, upper arms, down to the steady, constant ache in his lumbar. He's fallen from too many high places and landed badly to not have trouble with his back. Wade's hands feel good, and he's filling the silence pleasantly with some pop song Frank doesn't recognize, half of it hummed because Wade never seems to know enough of the words to actually sing the songs he gets in his head.

"You know, Nate said not to text you," Wade says out of the blue, dragging Frank's consciousness back from the pleasant haze he'd been floating in as those hands works the knots and tensions out of him. "He said you'd overthink it, which from him is basically saying you'd flip out and do something stupid. Like move to Detroit and become a Lions fan."

He pauses, like he expects Frank to have something to say to that, and then barrels forward, kneading out a bad knot in the middle of Frank's back.

"I figure you're harder to freak than that. Just in case though, you know… _I_ don't expect anything. Like, ever. It's just, I thought it would be fun, all three of us together on --"

 _Don't say it_ , Frank thinks, mental voice somewhere between vicious and pleading, hands clenching where he's got them pinned under his chest. _Don't fucking say anni-_

"Thanksgiving again. I mean you mess around with Nate and I mess around with you and sometimes Nate still spends the nigh-- hey!"

It's a bit of a trick flipping them so he can pin Wilson to the mattress, and the way they end up, one of Wade's shoulders and all of his head isn't resting on anything at all, so it's not really comfortable to either of them. Frank's right knee is digging into the edge of the mattress, precarious, so if he shifts his weight wrong his leg will slip. He's painfully aware that Wilson could easily get out from under him; Wilson could roll him right onto the floor or headbutt him or a hundred other little violent things, and there's a gun strapped behind the headboard and a ka-bar wedged along the side of the bed, and this could go so ugly so fast, and Wilson just smiles.

Just lays there and smiles, nothing on his mind but the shock of the position shift, and that smile is so pleased and so delighted it makes stupid things happen in Frank's chest, tight and warm and completely idiotic.

"I'm not gonna move to Detroit," he growls, and swallows Wade's laugh with a kiss that's half teeth, biting the thin line of Wade's lower lip, tasting him. They've had a few almost joking bicker-sessions about Wade brushing his goddamn teeth. Wilson seems to think when he's regrowing half of them on the regular there's no point, Frank insists that if he's going to swap spit with him then the least he could do is use some damn Listerine.

Wade gets his hands around Frank's shoulders, digging in so he can cling proper, giving as good as he got. Hips arch to grind against his, Wilson not quite bucking so much as trying to find an angle to grind at. He's eager; he's always eager. Frank thinks they could fuck every day and Wade would still be clingy and hungry and half-desperate. It's like the first time, or maybe the last time, every time they get like this, no matter how regularly they do it.

Frank think he understands. Wilson is the sort of guy who's gotten so used to being ditched, he expects all good things to up and disappear. That's why he's got that eager puppy face half the time, that's why he starts half his visits getting on his knees and sucking Frank's cock. The gifts, the texts, the completely nonsensical compliments and flirts; it's all part and parcel of the sort of guy who just doesn't want to be alone, and who figures he's going to end up that way anyway.

That's not the kind of man Frank is. He might not expect good things to last -- good things tend to sour, in his experience; the times you feel best are just as likely to turn into the times that kick you in the gut -- but he doesn't baldly seek out and cling to each and every hint of good in his life. He sees that as a way to lose, a way to expedite the loss. Men like Wilson would just as soon drain the well immediately, where Frank tries to ration.

What happens, he wonders, shifting so he can drag Wade proper onto the bed, when the well has no bottom? He's got no plans to put an end to this idiotic thing, however much he panics when it gets too pleasant or too... too familiar.

Doesn't seem likely that Wilson's going to quit it either. It's good for them both, and Cable... well Cable doesn't exactly keep himself distant either. The three of them shouldn't work so well together, but there's something to it, something that fits, something it would be stupid to run from.

Ride the good until it burns out, til it dries up on it's own. You don't run from water in the desert, you don't run from food in a famine.

Wade's shirt is soft, an ugly faded green with some cartoon title across the chest. Frank doesn't bother trying to figure out the words, he presses a kiss through the fabric, nuzzling the warm firmness of Wade's breastbone, shifting his way down the bed. He's clumsy about it, the angle weird, the action unpracticed. It's going to kill his back, what he's got in mind, but Wilson's already making eager little sounds, hard as a rock in his ugly sweatpants, and Frank thinks this'll be just about worth putting a new kink in his neck.

Besides, Wade can always massage it away.

"Pretty sure... supposed to be the massage-ee gets his dick sucked," Wade says, up on his elbows, watching Frank. Frank cocks an eyebrow, working on yanking Wilson's pants down so he can get at his dick, and after a second Wade seems to register the effort and braces his feet against the bed, lifting up so Frank can manage the job easier.

He's ugly. There's no way around it; he's a goddamn horror show if you only give him a glance. Nothing like Cable, all easy, if weird, good looks. Cable's dick is just about picture perfect, 'far as that goes; might trip people up at first with that thick vein of metal creeping up the side, but it's otherwise a real nice dick, kind of thing you'd see in porn. Wade's dick looks like it's been through at meat grinder; Frank's not sure if it's uglier hard or soft. Soft it looks uncomfortable, rough and bumpy; hard it looks _painful_ , red and scarred and like the delicate skin doesn't quite fit it right.

And the noise he makes when Frank puts his mouth on him doesn't help the impression of discomfort. He _mewls_ , thin whimpering noises that sound more like a man being stabbed than sucked off; he sounds surprised and hurt and Frank thinks maybe he should stop, but the fingers in his hair suggest the opposite.

Frank sucks at the head, working the foreskin with his tongue, and Wade writhes beneath him, the fingers in his hair tight and insistent, thighs trembling. It's interesting. It's _good_.

When he pulls back, Wilson lets him go, flopped back on the bed and chest heaving, dick hard and leaking. He's definitely into it.

A hand wrapped around him gets an eager groan, and that's always fun too, finding the moments where Wade's mouth finally shuts off, little ways to overwhelm him to the point he's got no words. Frank would have thought sucking Wade's dick would be an invitation to ceaseless babble, chatter unfocused but eager, the way he was at the start of a fuck. Hell, sometimes Wade even tried to keep talking when his mouth was full of _Frank’s_ dick.

It's kind of flattering, in a weird way. Gratifying; Wilson shuts up when you blow him. A good note to make.

The second time Frank puts his mouth on him, he doesn't go by halves. He swallows Wade as far as he can, feeling the head of his dick stretch his throat, pulls back with tight suction, and Wade flat out _wails_ , still wordless but _loud_. His fingers are back in Frank's hair, tugging and then petting, soothing the sting before he pulls again. Frank thinks he should tell him to be quiet; he’s got neighbours, and by now most of them are probably home for the day, cooking dinner. When he starts to pull back, Wade shivers and chokes, something close to a curse, and Frank decides he kinda likes it, being the one to make Wade incoherent.

Frank’s own arousal is a hazy, distant thing, simmering low. He’d be inclined to drag it out, take his time, but for the way Wade sounds like he’s being gutted, desperate and lost like he hasn’t ever gotten so good.

It’s weird, taking Wade down to the root; his nose meets more lumpy, bare skin where he thinks there should be a thatch of hair. Wade’s cock in his mouth, down his throat, is fever hot, heavy against his tongue and deeply textured in a way skin generally isn’t. And sucking Wade off is nothing, nothing at all, like sucking Cable off. Wade’s got no control, and doesn’t seem keen to be given any; Wade likes it when Frank grips hold of his hips and holds him down still, setting a hard rhythm.

“Good, fuck, God, Frank, you’re so…” Wade manages, the first intelligible words since Frank got his mouth on him. When Frank hazards a look through his eyelashes, Wade is stretched out, spine a pretty curve with his hips straining in Frank’s hands and his head angled back at the headboard. It’s confusing, how arousing such an ugly sight can be, how it doesn’t fucking matter what he looks like because seeing him like this is just _good_.

There’s been plenty of opportunities for Frank to watch Wade get off by this point. Why it’s never occurred to him until now to blow him, he couldn’t say; doing it now, feeling all that wild, unfocused energy focused on him, on his mouth, it’s the kind of rush he knows he’s going to chase again. And it feels kind of satisfying, to let himself admit he’s going to do this again, stop pretending it’s a ‘if it happens’ thing. Wade bites his own forearm, muffling a series of noises that could likely have been screams, when he cums, buried in Frank’s mouth.

Frank swallows it all, working the head with his tongue to get everything he can, until Wade’s noises are back to whimpers and he’s wriggling again, like he isn’t sure if he wants to get away or try getting off again.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Frank straightens up slowly, letting his spine pop back into alignment, rolling his shoulders. He’s stiff again, tense, but not the way he was. He’s not _angry_ now, just full of the usual aches. When he lays down, Wade wastes no time cuddling up close, pants barely pulled up, shirt rucked halfway up, burying his face against Frank’s neck. A second later his hand is on Frank’s cock, feeling him up through his dark wash jeans, humming a curious noise at finding Frank more soft than hard.

“I’m good,” Frank mutters, pushing his hand away, knowing well enough that Wade can get him hard and stupid in a matter of minutes if he lets him and finding that he’s really more interested in this, in just laying here together right now than cumming all over the bedding he’d only just washed last weekend. “Save it for Wednesday night.”

Wade’s good with his mouth, too, working a spot just over where Frank’s collar will cover it, probably leaving another damn blood bruise he won’t be able to hide. He should push him away, but he doesn’t; he tilts his head compliantly to the side and lets him. “Guess I’ll owe you,” Wade purrs, voice a rasping growl in Frank’s ear before slipping his hand under Frank’s shirt and resting it over his stomach, the way he likes to when they fall asleep.

It catches him off guard when Frank kisses him, the angle bad and awkward and the exchange therefore brief. “You don’t owe me a fucking thing,” he says, watching with some measure of satisfaction as the words process through Wade’s inscrutable brain. Ugly man, but he’s got a smile like sunrise when he really, genuinely feels something, and Frank accepts it when that stupid, complicated feeling asserts itself once again in his chest.

Because it’s okay. It’s okay to have a few purely selfish, good things. Maybe the well runs dry, maybe it doesn’t; there’s no point abandoning it or poisoning it on purpose.

It’s okay just to enjoy a drink during a drought.


	3. Danglin' (For Me Darlin')

Tuesday night, Frank tortures himself by deciding he needs to bring something to Wilson's place. His brain tries to insist on wine and he can hear Wilson laughing at him already, showing up at his shithole apartment with a bottle of red. Or white. A bottle of anything, honestly.

Cable drinks beer, seems to be of the 'shittier the better' class of beer drinker. Frank considers buying a case of Old Milwaukee, partially because it costs next door to nothing and mostly because it pleases a certain pettiness in him.

Whatever he buys, Wilson's gonna laugh and Cable's gonna give him one of those inscrutable stares like he's trying to solve some puzzle he lost half the pieces to. Also Cable gets to that pleasant, hazy stage of half-drunk after less than three cans of anything, as Frank has discovered from the half dozen or so overnight missions they've worked together.

This is stupid, it was a stupid fucking impulse, but then again that fits right in with every damn other thing he's done in the last year. Frank Castle does something stupid thinking about his fuckbuddies, more old news at eleven.

He ends up buying a pack of Busch, because he at least knows _he_ likes it, and honestly, if the other two don't, they don't fucking have to drink it.

Wednesday, he tries to stick to routine, like nothing's happening later at all. Wake up, morning run, breakfast, so on. He makes it to noon before the squirrely feeling creeps back up in him, makes him feel like he needs to crawl out of his skin.

There's always a war in his head, seems like. Sometimes it's real shit, stuff with consequence or meaning, right versus wrong, kill versus mercy sort of stuff.

Last night, it was over what kind of fucking beer to buy.

Now it's a last minute urge to bolt against all the want, the eager, grasping idiot part of him that wants to call his desires 'needs'. Saturday afternoon laying in bed with Wilson, dozing until the sun went down, listening to him chatter, listening to him snore when he fell asleep, kissing lazy in bed -- it was easy, with him warm and alive and right there, to justify the indulgence.

Four days later, one more big Mafia hit under his belt, Frank can't help thinking of all the ways it should feel like a mistake to keep involving himself with the mercenary and his telepathic boyfriend.

Except they've both made it so incredibly clear that they are not the problem. They want him. It shouldn't have to be more complicated than that. He wants them, they want him; seems like pretty goddamn simple math.

Half past three, he puts down the book he's been staring at and takes a shower. Takes the time to clean himself, thinking almost guiltily of Cable's mouth on him, tongue in his ass, working him loose with spit and a few fingers. Gets himself half hard on the fantasy, the memory, and decides against getting himself off. Save it, he decides; he might as well save it.

Traffic is ugly, the roads clogged with last-minute travelers heading out to be with family for the holiday tomorrow. Frank's glad he can do most of the trip to Wilson's place on foot, half an hour on a crowded subway car more than enough for him.

Standing at the top of the stairs on the third floor, Frank wracks his brain trying to remember the apartment number. His memory is shot to shit in a lot of ways, but usually addresses are easier, something about the combination of numbers and words.

It's really a sort of relief when Cable's voice overlays in his head, telling him which hallway to take, the door of the appropriate apartment opening without his having to knock. Almost belligerently, he shuts and locks the door behind himself before Cable's mind tricks can do it for him.

Wilson bounds across the room, exactly like a goddamn puppy, and Frank almost drops the beer on the surprisingly clean floor when the idiot leaps into his arms. He grunts as he stumbles into the wall, free hand clutching onto Wade's back to offer some support when long legs wrap around his waist. Wade kisses him, fingers in his hair, eager like it's not been a handful of days but months since they saw each other.  

He lets himself have it. Wilson is overly enthusiastic, but it's weirdly sweet and if he's honest, he kind of likes it. Likes the way Wade is so ridiculously thrilled to see him, the way he kisses like it's the best thing in the world. When Wade finally puts his feet back on the ground and lets Frank breathe, Frank licks his lips and finds himself smiling faintly at the vague taste of mint.

"Brushed your teeth," he acknowledges, and Wade grins, making a sweeping gesture with both hands.

"I _cleaned_ ," he says, obviously proud of himself. And it's true -- both other times Frank had been here, there had been trash, pizza boxes and take out containers scattered over every available surface, pushed out of the way to leave the couch accessible. Now the floor was clear of debris, the sagging, busted down couch replaced with something newer, plush looking, stain-free. "Just, uh, don't open any closets. Or cupboards. Or my bedroom door."

Frank can't help the little laugh that gets, and Wade's grin grows.

When he holds up the pack of beer, Wade gasps, eyes wide. "Beer! From the motherland!" He swipes the carton, bottles rattling, eyes glinting, obviously pleased. "You're really working for that good boy title, huh?"

Shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on one of the wall hooks, Frank pretends he's not going red and tells Wade, amicably, to shut the fuck up.

"Now, Frank, that's no way to be," Cable says, appearing in the hallway, hair wet from the shower, shirt completely absent. The sight is entirely Pavlovian; Frank barely notices Wade walking away to put the beer in the kitchen, he's busy trying not to bust the front of his jeans open. And he's horrifically aware that Cable knows the whole damn time, the easy smirk on his face as he moves to sit, spread-legged and casual, giving it away. "Everybody here knows you want to be good for us."

Frank thinks about flipping the smug asshole off, but it’s kind of hard to put any heart into it when he can feel Cable settling into the back of his head, comforting and familiar. As he toes his boots off, he can feel the mutant watching him, feeling out his head space, assessing, _enjoying_ him. He only hesitates for a moment when Cable beckons him over, and doesn’t resist at all when Cable pulls him down into his lap.

 _Already let Wade say hello_ , Cable says, fingers warm and firm on either side of his face, smoothing over his temples and petting gently over his hair as he leans up for a kiss. _Guess it’s my turn._

Where Wade was all desperate, clinging energy, Cable is slow, measured control; he has all the time in the world and knows exactly what he wants. His hold on Frank isn’t tight, isn’t much of a hold at all; his hands aren’t keeping Frank there like he thinks Frank will bolt, they’re just points of contact because Cable likes touching him.

One hand curls around the back of his head, the other moves to his lower back, hitching him closer. Frank shifts compliantly, rising up on his knees so he can get a more comfortable position, settling so he's straddling Cable's legs. The low noise of approval lights up his brain, electric pleasure at the feeling of having done well.

 _Wade thought you weren't going to bother showing up,_ Cable whispering in his head, letting him angle his jaw back so he can kiss the lines of his neck, teeth teasing his throat. There's that crackle, that warning in him, tight as a metal band cinched over his ribs: DANGER, it tells him, FIGHT, it demands. He gasps instead, arching his back into Cable's hands, trusting him not to let him spill backwards onto the floor. _Here you are though, ready to be so_ good _for us, aren't you?_

Teeth find his pulse point, and Frank gasps some garbled noise, agreeing thoughtlessly. The need to get away wanes under Cable's steady attention, never really pushing, only taking what Frank came here to give.

"Lieutenant?" Cable asks, out loud now, his voice a drawl that teases the line between mocking and genuinely inquisitive. "I asked a question."

"Good, 'm gonna be good," Frank growls back, fingers digging in against Cable's scalp, trying to pull him back to that biting thing on his neck. Cable laughs, refusing to move. "Christ, just..."

Cable leans in just to nuzzle the faded hickey Wade had left Saturday afternoon, the mark just a shadow by now where before it had been raised and red and impossible to miss. For all that Cable was the one with the damn near obsessive use of possessive language, Wade was always the one leaving his mark, bruises and bites and scratches down his back when he's got fingernails to leave them.

"Lieutenant, is that your idea of being good?" Cable asks, kissing up from the old mark, capturing Frank's mouth in a searing kiss. Metal fingers dig into the small of Frank's back, dragging a gasp out of him. "I don't know that you deserve anything, acting like that."

Something about the words makes a different sort of tension build in Frank's chest, not iron bands of fear-fight-run but the anxiety of thwarted desire, of being so close and then denied. He's found, in the last few months, that Cable's very good at that, finding just the right way to talk, make him feel small and mean and deserving of the denial so when he's finally rewarded with what he wants it feels a thousand times better than if it had just been given immediately.

 _Tell me you're going to be good_ , Cable orders, licking into his mouth and stealing his air. _Come on, tell me properly._

He can feel fingers in his hair, calloused and gentle, and fingers along his spine, corrugated metal and so careful, but there's more. Cable can't or won't always do this, this phantom touch shit, but when he does it drives Frank bugshit, caresses from a hundred hands, teasing, pressing, there and gone. Now there's pressure against his groin, a point between good and pain; there's a pinch at his nipples, twisting, plucking, till he's sore and gasping, pulling from the kiss.

"I'll be good, I'll be --" Frank groans when Cable kisses him again, hungrier now, like he can't resist. "Sir, I'll be good, swear it, just --"

 _Love when you get greedy_ , Cable grins against his mouth. _Dick drunk is always such a good look for you._

"Your dick's gotta be out for me to get drunk off it," Frank says, and over by the kitchen doorway, Wade laughs.

It drags Frank from the yawning edge of idiot arousal, away from the point where Cable gets him so quick -- where both of them get him, honestly, that place where nothing matters but feeling good. He feels a lurch, something like guilt and embarrassment all mixed up together; Wade's just been standing there watching them, watching Frank lose his mind in Cable's lap.

"I could watch that forever, even if it _is_  exhausting to have that song stuck in my head every time you two make goo-goo eyes at each other. Built Ford tough. Too beautiful"

Where Cable's still squatting in the back of Frank's head, he feels his confusion. It's strange to feel, Cable's mental presence always so certain, even when he's worried or concerned.

"Wade, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean."

That makes two of them. Wade just flaps a hand, grinning. "Just roll with it. Heh, roll. Trucks. Very funny, good job, me." A pause and then Wade shifts in place, not exactly nervous energy but certainly fidgeting. "I wanna give Frank his present now."

Frank's brow slides up, eyes narrowing, but Cable's smile is comforting, sly but pleased. Frank always feels like a bird before a snake when Cable gets that look on his face, that sort of eat-you-alive look, playful and dangerous. It puts a thrill in him that he's come to enjoy, a shock of anticipation that he doesn't want to run from.

 _You'll like this_ , Cable says privately, picking up the nerves that spiked the second Wade dropped the word 'present', petting over his hair and his mind, soothing. "It's a good surprise."

And really, there's a point in this kind of thing, this sort of... _relationship_... where you have to just make the choice. Shit or get off the pot. Trust them or put an end to the whole shebang. Neither of them have done a damn thing in the last year to hurt him, not without his explicitly asking for it. It helps, too, to remember that he's known them longer than a year, done that long dance for a few good months before they finally got him to strip down and play. Since that first fight, neither of them has put a hand on him he didn't allow or outright ask for.

 _Rain in the desert_ , he thinks dumbly, feeling Cable's amused confusion at the nonsensical phrase as he moves to get off the man's lap.

Wade considers him from across the room, purses his lips and tilts his head, like he's taking in one of those modern art pieces. "No," he says, “I think you should sit. On Nate. I liked that better. Except face me."

He only hesitates for a moment, but a moment is enough for Wade to pull a pouty face. Behind him, Cable shifts his legs together, and there’s a sort of inexorable pull down, until he’s sitting with his legs spread to either side of Cable’s, that thick metal arm settled around to rub at his thigh.

Only when he steps forward does Frank realize Wade's got his hands behind his back, and the grin that spreads across his face is so deeply eager and confident that he's done something good and is about to reap the rewards. Frank feels a flutter of nervousness and Cable's human hand slips under his shirt, brushing along the hair over his stomach.

There's nothing to run from. He digs his feet into the carpet anyway, watching Wade present a thin white box from behind his back.

"So Nate sort of told on you, but this was totally my idea, unless you hate it in which case, Nate bought it and I'm just the messenger you can't kill," he says, standing in front of Frank, holding the bottom of the box in his hands and offering it to Frank to open. "Except you're gonna love it so mostly remember that it was all my idea and I get the good-boy points."

In the back of his head, Cable is a warm, sturdy presence, strong and comfortable and radiating absolute confidence that Frank will like this.

The thing is, Wade get Frank gifts all the time. Half of them Frank can't figure out _why_ he got them, cannot track the logic that leads Wade to spend money on crap he didn't ask for and doesn't need. He's bought Frank a cooking apron, bought him some fancy soap that looks like the night sky, pitch black and full of shine. He bought him a pair of high quality socks with fucking marijuana leaves on them.

Not a single one of his gifts, the real gifts, have been bad or irritating.

So Frank lifts the lid off the little white box, nervous but smothering the tiniest sense of eager, kiddish excitement, and feels his heart lodge in his throat and the sight of sleek black leather and silver.

It's a collar, obviously artisan, probably stupid expensive. A thick band of padded leather with a slender silver chain worked along the outside, threaded from the buckle to the name place fixed to the front. His name, embossed on glistening silver, a stylized dog tag hanging from a loop, bottom center. His breath catches, apprehension and _want_ , desperate clawing _want_ , fighting in his head.

A collar like this won't choke him, not like the fantasy he'd shared with Cable back in June. He'd have to strain hard against it and it still wouldn't hurt the way a chain, thick chain with _teeth_ would hurt. There's something about that, about taking that desire and taming it, making it real without giving him the parts that are just about pain, that puts a complicated, sweet ache in his chest, vying for room between his heart and his lungs.

They never hurt him. Even when his idiot desires could so easily lead to pain.

They temper him, they work with him.

He lifts the collar off the paper lining the box, holding it, feeling the weight of it, appreciating the simple decoration of the chain against that heavy black leather, the plush cushion of the part that would touch his skin. The little dog tag, where if this were for an actual dog there would be an address or phone number, says simply 'GOOD BOY' in a sort of fancy, slanted hand. His name on the silver plate embedded directly in the leather is a bold, heavy font, plain and simple.

If he were the sort to do such a thing, he might have picked it himself. There's something about the look of it, the overall effect of it, that cannot be mistaken. If anyone put this on a dog, the rest of the world would have some questions about the nature of the relationship between the owner and the pet.

When Wade reaches for the collar, Frank lets him take it. He still feels like he can't quite get a full breath, like if he lets that thing go around his neck its going to melt there, going to brand him, going to be impossible to ever remove.

In a way, he thinks he's right, not in a physical way but more metaphoric. After all, the sensation of Wade's hand cupping his throat, holding steady there in just the approximation of a collar, had never faded for him. He burned with a bizarre hungry shame, humiliation that somehow felt _good_ , to remember how he'd gotten off to that, to Wade riding him, stealing every scrap of control no matter how he snarled, with nothing but a gentle hand and three words; " _my good boy_ ".

He can feel Cable, sitting very still under him and very present in his head, ready to help if his brain hauls off on some useless bid to escape. Part of him is leaning toward that, but most of him is just watching Wade open the buckle clasp, watching those hands on the leather. Most of him _wants_ it, and he thinks he's earned the easy option.

All he can do is raise his chin as Wade slides into his lap, pinning him between them, giving him the room he needs to slide the leather around his neck.

"Never outside this apartment," Frank growls, a warning that just gets a pleased laugh as Wade secures the buckle again, feeling the space between collar and skin to make sure it's not too tight, not going to chafe.

"Our secret good boy," Wade says, fond and deeply pleased. Frank finds, weirdly, he breathes easier with the collar  _on_ than he'd been able to since seeing it.

Really, it fits perfectly. It sits heavy against his throat, just tight enough that he can't possibly forget that it's there. Only when Wade hums and grinds against him, digging him uncomfortably down against Cable, does Frank realize he's well on the way to fully hard, still or again it's hard to say.

Wade bends over him and kisses him again, less demanding than his greeting had been but no less greedy. It's plain that he just as excited as Frank, as Cable under them both.

Cable's voice oozes over his thoughts like honey, hand up his shirt and teasing his chest. _What do good boys get, Frank,_ he asks, just as Wade had forever ago. Fingers pinch sharply at his nipple and twist when Frank only parts his lips and gasps in answer. _Out loud. I wanna hear you say it._

"Treats," Frank manages, voice already ragged 'round the edges. "Good boys get treats."

"Yup, that's it," Wade says, tone exactly what he'd expect to hear if Wade were speaking to a favourite, stubborn pet. "Good boys get treats and I don't think there's been a better boy all year."

He hears Cable hum an agreeable noise, and it's weird, the way he feels a rush of dizzy, yapping delight at that at _good boy they think I'm a good boy think I'm good_ even as the angry, snarling thing that drives so much of his life anymore growls in defiance.

They can call him whatever they want. Maybe for them, they're not even lying. Cable's presence in his head can soothe that animal part of him, make that rabid dog chained up inside lay down and sleep for a little while, but it never goes away. Wade will stand before him and take it if that rabid dog breaks its chain -- he's let Frank punch him in the face, break his nose, and Frank thinks he's trusting and stubborn enough that he'd put up with worse.

It doesn't matter to them that they've got a monster pinned between them; the potential of him doesn't matter to them. Cable's been in his head, sifting through all the shit, dealing with him at his very worst, and still he's willing to hold him and call him _good_.

Hell, he's probably playing witness to the strain Frank's idiot brain is putting into this, hands steady on him as Wilson tries to kiss him breathless. Maybe Cable understands -- maybe both of them understand, that the longer this Thing lasts, the better it makes him feel, and so the more terrifying it becomes. The better it is, the worse it will hurt when he fucks it up.

A chuckle behind him, fingers slipping between the collar and his skin, making it tight, yanking him back from Wade so he's gasping against Cable, that rough, pleasant voice low in his ear, just for him.

"You're not gonna fuck this up," Cable growls, the words so low and certain, Frank feels them in his bones, feels them sink in and bloom. "You're our good boy."

Like it's that simple.

The fingers on the collar slacken and withdraw, nothing to left to choke Frank at all.

A year. It’s been a year. Full circuit, one moment in this place to now, and if anything, he’s _more_ wanted here than he was before.

And maybe that _is_ stupid. Maybe it’s reckless and dangerous and all the other easy, catch-all words that really just mask it being _complicated._  An entanglement, an indulgence. Maybe this is everything he's afraid of it being -- but it's lasted a year, and the only part getting more difficult is Frank's overthinking every damn thing.

Taking a breath, Frank allows himself to drag Wade back in, fingers hard on those scarred cheeks, digging into his neck to hold him close.

"Nate, I think he likes his present," Wade says, when he pulls away to slide off the pile they've made on the couch. "I think he _really_ likes it."

Cable laughs, keeping Frank on his lap with one hand spread over his thigh, not trapped, just gentle pressure. Just the reminder that he's wanted. The hand on his stomach shifts to work on the button of his fly, the fingers on his thigh kneading the muscle while invisible hands slip under his shirt, over his chest and his arms. Teeth tease an earlobe, Frank fighting the urge to arch into those hands. It's a relief when the zipper is tugged down, room in his jeans for the big hand to slip in and stroke his aching cock.

"You've really got no idea," Cable purrs, and Frank feels dizzyingly close just at the sight of Wade dropping to his knees, Cable’s feet hooked around Frank’s ankles to encourage him to spread his legs.

He knows what's coming. Wade slides his hands up his thigh, warm, firm pressure, humming an appreciative sound as he leans in, mouthing at Cable's hand, nuzzling, eager the way he always seems to be as Cable maneuver's Frank's cock free from his underwear. The front of his jeans are gonna be a spit soaked mess unless Wade's suddenly learned some other way to suck dick, and his boxers will be worse.

And he wants it. God, he wants it. Something about the collar, how every breath reminds him it's there, his name, GOOD BOY dangling on silver.

 _Hands on me_ , Cable tells him. _Hands on me, don't touch Wade, just tell him._

Franks hands flex in the air, caught between reaching to push Wade down or pull him in, anything to get more than just the ghost of his breath on his dick. Cable growls his name, out loud, and Wade laughs, delighted, looking up at him from an angle that looks neither comfortable nor productive.

"C'mon," Frank says, hoarse, hands down to curve at the sides of Cable's thighs. "Don't tease."

"I said _tell him_ ," Cable snarls, hooking his fingers under the collar again, jerking him back to sit straight, so he has to struggle if he wants any air. It feels good, the loss of control, the way Cable can just take, the way with so little effort he can restrict Frank from something as basic as breathing. It's better than he'd ever imagined, the supple suede of the collar's lining not painful, really, just steady, unrelenting pressure against his trachea.

And Frank could fight. They all know it. He doesn't want to, and they all know _that,_ too. That's part of it, part of the unbelievably good of being like this; they bring him to the edge of this impossible thing, strip him slowly, carefully of defense, leave him with just the want, the need, and give him a choice.

"Yeah, Frankie, tell me," Wade says, and he leans in, little shit, little teasing bastard, and drags just the point of his tongue up the side of his cock, tracing a vein. "Tell me what I should do with this."

When Cable eases on the collar, stroking a finger along the top edge to soothe where the leather dug in, Frank says, to Wade's evident delight, "Shut up and suck it."

"Well since you asked so nice," Wade says, not a hint of sarcasm in his tone, before leaning in and taking just the head in, slurping at the leak of precum and swallowing wetly. He doesn't move to take anymore, and Frank wants to grab him, wants to shove him down or hold him and fuck into the tight hot clutch of his throat.

He knows Wade can take it, knows Wade would be _thrilled_ for him to do it -- Wade loves it when he's rough. He loves watching him lose control, Frank thinks that's at least half of why he never shuts up and always seems to pick at every damn crack he finds in Frank's calm.

But he keeps still. Cable told him to keep his hands off, so he tightens the curve of his fingers to Cable’s and tries to breathe steady. He can feel his pulse pounding, the steady thrum under his skin seeming exaggerated by the weight of the collar. Being good is paramount; he wants more but he has to be good.

"Tell him," Cable coaxes, his voice low, the rumble of it steady against Frank's back. He can feel every word where his shoulders touch Cable's chest. It reminds him of that sunny room, the mountain air, the cold, and Frank can feel his face reddening, Cable drawing the words out of him just as he had then, making him admit what he should be able to keep inside. "He'll do whatever you ask, but you have to ask."

Wade is still watching him, and it's obscene, the stretch of his lips, the way his tongue works when he swallows, the eager, delighted glint in those eyes. He really would, Frank thinks, he'd do anything, because he loves this, loves it the way Frank loves the reverse.

"Tell him," Cable repeats, and Frank can't stand it, can't stand that he's making the man repeat an order, can't stand that he needs more and Wade won't give it.

"More," he gasps out, choking on it, forcing the word like if he can get one out the rest will be easier. A breath, a curse; Wade takes him to the root, all at once, gagging in a way that shouldn't feel so good but absolutely does. "Suck it like you mean it, c'mon."

It takes a few passes, Wade sucking noisily up to grab a breath and then swallowing him back down, burying his nose in the nest of Frank's pubic hair, for Frank to realize Wade's gagging on purpose. The flutter of his throat, the wet, choking noises; it's all performative, it's just to add that extra bit of sensation, and it works. It feels so good, so astonishingly good.

Cable's petting at his chest again, nuzzling his shoulder and kissing just above the collar, gentle steadying counterpoint.  "I want you to cum down his throat, Frank," he says, and Frank feels close, feels like it's going to happen whether he wants to or not. "He wants it too, can't you tell? Working you so good. Give him what he wants."

Making a low, imploring sound, Wade makes his enthusiastic agreement very clear, and there is no possible universe where Frank could resist.

Wade swallows enthusiastically, working Frank to oversensitivity with his fingers digging bruises into the meat of his thighs the whole time. Frank’s brain is white noise, nothing on air but pleasure, the rush of endorphins, the impossible want for more even when he’s just cum and the idea of getting hard again sounds almost masochistic.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, shaken, overwhelmed just by the echoes as Wade sits back, licking his lips like a smug cat. There’s an angry smudge of red on either side of Wade’s mouth that rapidly fades, tiny abrasions healing as Frank watches, left from the zipper of his still-open jeans.

The front of Wade’s ugly sweatpants is damp, tented obscenely, and Frank can’t help thinking about having him pinned to his bed, the way he squirmed and whined, speechless. Wade holds his gaze, petting over his own inner thigh, grazing his erection, and it’s -- it shouldn’t look so good, but it does. He can’t help but emphasize, “ _Fuck._ ”

The hands on him start to tug at his shirt and Frank compliantly, almost without thought, moves to help get it off. The damp on his jeans and soaked into his boxers is rapidly cooling to the point of just being uncomfortable, and when Cable runs calloused fingers over his soft cock, Frank groans, hips hitching into the touch.

“He can suck his own dick,” Cable says, off hand, like that’s not five kinds of fucked-up kinky. “That’s not what he needs you for.”

“To be clear, I absolutely will accept blowjobs one hundred percent of the rest of the time,” Wade says immediately. “But I took way too much time out of my day already to settle for anything less than that dick in my ass, sooner rather than later, please and thanks.”

Frank groans, he can’t help it. They’re ridiculous. Both of them, idiots; he doesn’t even know if he can get it up again after that.

“Oh, you will,” Cable purrs, curling his fingers around him, making his breath catch. It’s hard to tell if Cable’s pulling things out of his memory; vivid recollection of Cable on his knees in the shower, riding his dick in that big, sun-drenched bed, cumming so hard both times, barely half an hour apart. “You know how I know?”

 _Cuz you’re a mind-reading cheat and you already saw once,_ Frank thinks back, hissing through his teeth, gasping loudly when Cable grips him hard, almost too hard, just this side of violent.

“I know,” Cable growls, loosening his grip and stroking again, feeling Frank twitch and thicken in his grasp, pulse skyrocketing, “because I asked you to.”

Wade’s got his hand in his pants now, gripping himself more than actually masturbating. He touches himself like he can’t help it, eyes hungry on them. And to put it completely plain, Frank wants it. He’s half sure he knows where this is going, and he’s wanted it for a long time now, secret, shameful want; too much to ever ask for.

He feels is, Cable pulling at the thought, dragging it to the forefront, this fantasy he’s gotten off too more times than he wants to admit in the last year, a flurry of sensation and mental imagery, the impression of heat and sweat, the slide of too many limbs, hot and slick and so full, that particular gasp-y giggle Wade makes when he’s getting fucked just right. He feels the approval, the pleased _pride_ in the thought, and Cable holds him close, hands on his hips now as he grinds his own erection against Frank’s ass.

“Listen up, Lieutenant,” Cable breathes in his ear, seeming to enjoy the way Frank’s hands scrabble over his forearms, not even Frank certain if he’s trying to keep him or get away, overwhelmed. “I’m gonna fuck you, and you’re gonna fuck him, and you’re not gonna cum again until I’ve had my fill of you, you got that?”

“Yeah,” Frank gasps out, shivering, half-hard again at the thought of it, the clawing eagerness in his chest that tears him open at the barest hint of getting something he’s wanted and dreamed of and hidden for a solid year. “Yeah, okay, yeah.”

The collar draws tight again. The grip on it pulls him up straight, makes him arch to follow when Cable leans into the back of the couch, his hands reflexively going to his own throat to pet over the leather, not a real struggle, more like to feel the seal of it around his neck, the reality of it. GOOD BOY under his fingers, a dangling medal from the center of his throat.

“I don’t think I heard you right, Lieutenant,” Cable growls, and distantly, like he’s in another room, another world, Frank can hear Wade throwing his two cents in. “Try again, what was that?”

“Yes sir,” Frank says, voice strained around the pressure at his throat. “Understood.”

Cable lets up on the collar, fingering the tag hanging from it, the part of him that’s spread out in Frank’s brain humming with pleasure. He doesn’t say the words, not even privately, but Frank feels it anyway, the surge of approval, the ego-stroking _good boy_.

He stands up and lets Wade help him get his pants the rest of the way off, dragging them down and kicking them off, Wade’s eager hands touching everywhere, almost as thorough as Cable’s telekinetic thing. Wade gets a certain look in his eyes, planning mischief, and Frank has to push him back, something like a laugh building in his chest, when the little jackass tries to get his mouth on Frank again. He actually does laugh when Wade snaps at his fingers, teeth bared in something like a grin while Cable tells them to go get on the fucking bed, quit wasting time.

There’s a part of Frank that, even as Wade’s taking him by the hand and eagerly dragging him to the open bedroom, that tells him he should run. It’s insidious, a sense that he can only get hurt doing this, that he’s putting a gun to his own head. Every time Wade kisses him, bites at his lips, laughs, that sense dies a little, or at least dulls. The room can only be Cable’s, too clean and spare to be Wade’s, though it’s not like he’s got time to take it in, immediately dragged down to kiss, Wade teasing instead of getting his own clothes off. Frank’s naked and hard, kissing Wade and shoving him into the mattress, pinning him, enjoying it.

 _Water in the desert_ , he thinks. It’s just water in the desert, and he won’t run.

After a bit, he bites once more at Wade’s neck, sucking a mark that won’t stay before rolling off and slapping him across the shoulder. “Clothes off. Hurry up.”

“Bossy!” Wade says, playfully indignant. “Pretty sure I’m the one who put the collar on _you_.”

“Collar don’t mean I’m trained,” Frank says, laying back, watching Wade strip. There’s always this moment with Wade, something Frank doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing, where he hesitates for just a moment, eyeing the lights, the windows, before yanking his shirt off and kicking his way out of his pants, inelegant and hurried.

When Wade lays back out on the bed, climbing eagerly into Frank’s arms to push against him, hitching their hips together so they can grind like a couple of horny teens, Frank slides his hands possessively over Wade’s ass, freezing when he feels something warm and hard lodged there.

“Fuckin’ eager little slut,” Frank says, lets his voice growl to cover the actual surprise he feels. He nudges against the base of the toy, feeling the shape, the way it nestles into the crack of Wade’s ass, unobtrusive and smooth. Glass, maybe. Wade just grins, squirming against him.

“It’s so _cute_ when short guys call me _little_ ,” he says, tapping his finger to Frank’s nose. In the back of Frank’s head, Cable grumbles

_Jesus, he does this shit with you too_

like it bothers him, like it matters, while Frank snaps at the offending finger and flips Wade, enjoying the token struggle, the way Wade can easily make this so violent, the sense that if this turned into a fight it would be a _good_ one, until he’s got Wade pinned face down on the bed, one arm pinned at an ugly angle, the other trapped under his own body.

“‘Sposed’ta be six-three and stacked,” Wade goes on, twitching when Frank uses his free hand to tug at the plug, twisting and pushing it back deep. “If you’re even six-foot-nothin’ I’ll eat your ass.”

“You’ll do that anyway,” Frank dismisses, and pulls the toy free, enjoying the way Wade groans and arches into his grip, whining. Tossing the toy, slick with lube, onto the floor and out of the way, Frank lets Wade’s arm loose so he can hold him open, looking at the damage. It wasn’t exactly small, the clear glass plug, and Wade always healed so damn fast, Frank might as well never have touched him.

When he presses two fingers inside, Wade moans, burying his face in the sheets. Frank plays with him for a minute, aware that Cable is leaning against the door frame, watching. Crooking his fingers just so gets a noise that Frank thinks _might_ be an attempt at words but is so fragmented and broken it could be anything or nothing. Frank’s cock is heavy between his thighs, hard just from this, from the thought of more, and it feels greedy and good to be like this.

Cable hands him a bottle of one of the ridiculous flavoured lubes Wade loves -- Frank’s caught him just eating the stuff, like it’s liquid candy -- and he hooks his fingers, stretching, holding Wade open and dribbling the sweet-smelling gel straight into him. He likes the way Wade twitches, hips working against the mattress, desperate noises dribbling from his mouth.

A third finger fits easily, Wade so clearly more than ready. That’s something Frank likes too, how quick Wade flips, playful and teasing to desperate, willing to beg, debase himself in a dozen pretty ways, or curse and threaten for what he wants, all demands and bullying. He’s got his face against the sheets still, but Frank knows the cadence of his pleas, even smothered.

“Roll him over. Don’t make him beg, he’ll take your pretty tag away.” Cable’s fingers brush the metal dangling from Frank’s collar, over his chin, fingers smoothing along his cheek before pulling away, a dazzling sense of rising tension that fizzles at the sudden break in contact. Frank hurries to obey, Wade turning onto his back willingly.

His cock is hard and dripping, always so wet when they really get going. Frank’s not surprised to see a slick, dark spot where Wade’s hips had been grinding into the bed, cum soaking into the thick blanket. Wade seemed to have no refractory period at all some nights, cumming quick and almost immediately ready to go again if Frank hadn’t gotten his yet. A brush of Frank’s fingers to his inner thigh gets Wade’s legs spread wide, hips rolling up eagerly, so Frank can get where he’s wanted, stroking himself with the remnants of the lube still on his right hand before finding a comfortable way to position himself.

Wade’s so hot inside, tight even after however long with the plug and Frank stretching him besides, and it takes all Frank’s restraint to stop when Cable tells him to. He’s only half-way there, Wade open and wet and shaking under him, so ready, but he freezes, bracing himself as Cable starts feeling _him_ up. It takes a second to realize Cable’s teasing him almost exactly how he’d been teasing Wade, holding him open, dipping a thumb into him, hard and dry so it aches and Frank bows his head hissing.

It stings, not true pain but more a counterpoint to how good everything is.

“Jesus Christ, Priscilla, we don’t have all fucking day here,” Wade growls, trying to work himself better onto Frank, take him deeper, make him move. Frank shudders with the effort it takes to keep still, not to comply with Wade, knowing it’ll feel better for all of them if he’s patient. “Fucking _move_ , come _on_.”

Pressure against Frank’s shoulders, right between them, pushes down right as a slick finger replaces the broader, shallow intrusion of that thumb, and Frank bends willingly, letting his face be pressed into Wade’s neck.

“Shut him up,” Cable says idly, so composed for a man whose mind pressed against Frank’s is alive with the exact same eager want as Wade's showing.

Wade keeps snarling when Frank kisses him, but he brings his hands to Frank’s head, cradling, petting, tangling into the longer parts of his hair without tugging. It’s rare that Wade forgets and pulls on Frank’s hair. Frank swallows the mercenary’s ceaseless complaints and attempts to bait, and Wade in turn muffles the frankly embarrassing noises worked out of Frank’s throat as Cable quickly, efficiently slicks him up.

In the end, Frank’s almost as ready to beg as Wade, gasping open-mouthed by Wade’s ear, and he knows -- he can feel in the smug, hazy impression of Cable's brain against his own, exactly what Cable wants. It's as good as an order, and he's good, he's _obedient_ , but it's still so hard, making his mouth work now.

He drags in one desperate, ragged breath, then another, and another, feeling the mattress shift and hearing it groan as Cable leans in holding him, all that lethal power, that potential, focused down on him. He holds out, hoping for some small mercy, Cable to just get tired of waiting and give them -- because Wade's waiting too, they're all held up by this reticence -- what they want.

 _Now is that good behaviour_ , Cable asks, sneering in the back of Frank's head, as if Frank can't feel the hunger radiating off him. Cable's the only one who hasn't cum yet, and the only one with any damn control of the situation. _So give me what I want, Frank. Don't make me ask twice._

"Fuck me, I want -- please, just, fuckin' -- Summers, c'mon, fuck me." It bursts out of Frank like vomit, hot and filthy, sick he's been holding back all evening, maybe longer. And as it sometimes goes with holding back a certain kind of sick, it feels good, letting it out, even when he can't control it. "I want you to fuck me so hard Wilson feels it. Fuck me, let me fuck him, I want --"

"Good," Cable breathes, and just like that he's pressing against Frank, the head of his cock catching on the rim of Frank's hole, slick and huge. "That's good, Frank."

It is. It's so good, Frank's breath catches in his throat as Cable finally, finally gives it to him, all of him, one hand gripped hard to Frank's hip, the other teasing at the collar, slipping between leather and skin. Cable fills him exactly right, just big enough to give that sweet ache, stretching him open and holding him, vulnerable but uninjured, and when he slams the last several inches home, the burn of organic metal teasing Frank's rim, he's allowed to rock forward, fucking into Wade.

The groan that breaks the silence is equal parts all of theirs. Wade's fingers clutch and grip everywhere, digging into sweaty skin, gripping his hair, stretching to reach beyond him to grapple for Cable as well. His mouth is on Frank, so he can feel the words Wade can't quite get enough breath to speak, muttered into his shoulder, under his ear, against the leather of the collar.

It's awkward, and Frank's lower back is very soon complaining even as the rest of him revels in the sweet burn, the hot-slick-tight-full pleasure of it all. His angle in Wade isn't the best, he can tell by the way Wade keeps trying to wiggle and shift, writhing when Frank manages a particularly deep or well aimed thrust. It's mostly shallower, Cable keeping him where he wants, making Wade have to put a good deal more effort in that he usually has to with Frank.

And Cable fucks _slow_. He fucks like they're on break from the world, like this is the only thing that matters and there's nothing in the future to worry about, nothing that could ever interrupt or distract him. Single-minded and focused, right up until Wade snaps something about his 'tantric meditation bullshit fucking' and 'pick up the goddamn pace before someone has a heart attack', both comments shocking gasping, shallow laughs out of Frank.

"At least let him fuck _me_ proper," Wade snarls, then gasps, back arching, and it doesn't take Frank too much thought to realize that Cable's doing something with his telekinesis. Something fantastic, by the noises Wade's making.

Cable kisses the spot between Frank's shoulders he likes to press to make Frank bend down, moaning against his skin and shoving in particularly deep, so he's finally, finally buried in Wade all the way, deep as he can get like this. Wade moans and shakes, gasping that odd laugh that Frank learned some months ago means he's hitting just the right spot for him, and now every move from Cable gets a change in the pitch of that laugh, higher until it's not a laugh at all. It's just Wade, hitching and gasping, clamped so tight around Frank when he cums that Frank knows there's no way he's going to last. Not in the face of that.

"Not till I'm done," Cable growls against his back, moving faster now, harder, hands on Frank's hips helping drag him into his rhythm, Frank little more than a body he's using for pleasure. It's not like that time in the rec center hide out; it's not a punishment, it's simply natural, Cable getting what Cable wants a means of giving Frank what _Frank_ wants. "Close now. Close."

The word echoes through Frank's head, the only important thing in Cable's mind, hazy and fucked out, drunk on pleasure, on the good he only gets being buried in Frank, _just you, so good for me, good for me, mine, good_ , until Frank's drunk with it too, chasing it the way Cable is, belly slimy with Wade's cum, Wade sobbing in over-stimulated pleasure under him until Cable finally, finally runs out of tension and snaps.

Frank feels all of it, every pulse, his own sense of hot fullness and Cable's sense of perfect tightness around him, milking him. Frank's barely even aware of his own orgasm, more aware of Wade's hands on him, on his face, dragging him in for a kiss, calling him good over and over, "good boy, my good boy."

And it rings something in him, it does, a warning of sorts, a clue that this is becoming more dangerous all the time, the pleasure he feels at the sense of possessiveness from both of them. The sense of comfortable _rightness_ in being coaxed to lay down, catch his breath for just a minute, even though the blanket they're all curled together on is filthy now.

 _Run from this,_ that animal part of him insists, _before you hurt them. Before they hurt you. Get them killed. Get yourself killed._

Frank doesn't need Cable in his head to know that soft, insistent, oh-so-logical voice is just a new way of that snarling, wild dog in his head to try and take control. And he doesn't need Wade's promise of cold beer and pancakes to convince him to stay.

This is his water in the drought, the feast offered during famine. And he could run -- when he's stupider, wilder, meaner, he will run. He will fuck up.

But tonight, he's more than willing to wear his collar, to be kissed and teased and touched, to listen to Cable taunt Wade about saving him for leftovers after tomorrow's dinner. Tonight, he's here, soaking it in so when he's in the desert of his every day again, he has something to remember, something to sustain him.

It's good, and he's allowed, for a little while at least, to just have that good thing.


End file.
